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External hackers and insider threats. Customer expectations and government mandates.

Data protection is a complex challenge, and it demands attention at every level of an organization. PKWARE's in-house experts are here to help you stay up to date on best practices, emerging trends, and new resources for enterprise data security.

Now that I’m settled in here at PKWARE, I’m going to do something I haven’t done since my journalist days: I’m going to interview people on a regular basis and work the feedback into a steady stream of analytical posts.

I’ll ask questions of my colleagues, for sure. But I’m also going to ask questions of people outside the company, particularly security practitioners who deal with the challenges our technology is designed to address.

Ask PKWARE customers about the biggest challenge they face, and many respond with one word: compliance.

Every industry has separate mandates to worry about, such as HIPAA for healthcare, and PCI DSS for financial services. The common denominator in just about every compliance mandate is the need for Data Loss Prevention.

Overall, compliance requirements have been good for security. If it weren’t for these regulations and industry standards, many enterprises wouldn’t be doing nearly enough to safeguard sensitive data.

But there are risks in how enterprises handle compliance. A checkbox mentality often ensues, where companies put their primary focus on checking off the boxes on a list during a compliance audit.

Here at PKWARE, when we describe the types of adversaries our technology is designed to block, we say “thieves, snoops and idiots.”

The first two are easy to describe. The thief wants to break into enterprise networks and steal sensitive information and the snoop is either out to invade your privacy or is a trusted employee with access to information that, if shared with the outside world, could cause a lot of damage to the enterprise’s reputation.

I recently presented at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society – North Carolina Chapter – where I talked about the importance of securing data within the healthcare industry. During my time at the conference, I kept my ear to the ground to better understand broader trends impacting the industry and left with three big takeaways:

Protecting the world’s information can create strange bedfellows. But sometimes it’s worth the unexpected allegiances with potential rivals or social media companies in an effort for everyone to get a better grasp on data security.

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About PKWARE

PKWARE protects the world's data with smart encryption software and solutions. In use by more than 35,000 customers, including government agencies and global corporations, PKWARE's easy-to-use security armors data itself and eliminates vulnerabilities wherever data is used, shared or stored.